


Outside These Walls

by LeaperSonata, omniversal



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Theseus and the Minotaur - Plutarch
Genre: Ancient Greece, Gen, Happy Ending, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-29 21:35:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3911482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeaperSonata/pseuds/LeaperSonata, https://archiveofourown.org/users/omniversal/pseuds/omniversal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is more to the world than cold stone and shadows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



> My prompt was to give Ariadne more agency or to make the Minotaur a victim instead of a monster - I decided to go for both! I hope you like it, Merfilly :)
> 
> This fic wouldn't exist as it is without the selfless assistance of my best friend, who is a saint and roughed in a couple of scenes for me when I was stuck on them. (I have thus added him as a coauthor.)
> 
> Thanks to Morbane for the last-minute beta!

The Olympians have always been cruel to the Titans and their get. I have known this ever since my earliest memories. Since my cradle my mother has whispered to me to be wary of the Olympians, to never ask them for anything. They are not kind - not to us.  They can only be relied on to betray.

My great-grandfather and great-grandmother were locked in Tartarus with the rest of their kin, though their children escaped to be the sun, the moon, and the dawn. My grandfather the sun begat my mother Pasiphae and her infamous sister Circe, and with that impeccable line of breeding Pasiphae wed my father Minos.

It was well for a while, and I was born. Then he took over the kingship from his father, winning out over his brothers, and he prayed to Poseidon to confirm his rule. Poseidon sent him a sign, as he wanted: a white bull. My father was greedy and foolish, and decided to sacrifice a different bull in its place to the god. My mother begged him not to cross the Olympians, but he drugged her wine and saw the sacrifice through while she slept.

So Poseidon was angry. Of course he was. The Olympians are easily angered, and always have been.

And they are never fair.

It was not my father who was punished for his hubris. It was my mother who was drugged again, by the power of the gods, and saw her vision fogged and her hearing distant, and whose limbs were moved without her will to guide them, who was forced to go to Daedalus and call upon his arts to build her a wooden bull, and to see through those acts that resulted.

And it was my mother who, nine months later, bore a babe so large he nearly tore her apart from within, a babe who my father denounced as a monster. The king then sent for Daedalus himself, for a way to lock that 'monster' out of sight. My mother, though she was never allowed to see him again, saw him long enough to give him a name, a name that she told me to ensure he knew: Argus, shining.

My mother also ensured that Daedalus taught me the trick to finding my way through my brother's Labyrinth, once it was completed. The king forbade her to ever visit her son - for he was her son, and she loved him as such, despite the cruelty that brought him to life - and so her only contact with Argus was whispered messages sent through me, the king's forgotten daughter, who was free to go where she willed. Mother always ensured that her children would be armed the best they could against the whims of the gods, and her sister Circe as soon as I could speak was there at my side or in my dreams to teach me the ways of magic that did not rely upon Olympus.

We sat ever in shadow, the high walls of the Labyrinth blocking the sun from reaching to the floor except at high noon. Argus's skin was white-pale where his fur did not cover it, blending in with the white fur he had inherited from his sire. My arm next to his was bronze, even though as a pampered princess I was pale as milk compared to the guards and common people. He looked colorless next to me, a ghost. Like all the color and reality that should have been his had come to me - the princess, the one who lived in the palace, the one whose tongue could form Greek words.

But words are not the only way to speak. Argus could understand me, despite his own bull's tongue's unsuitability to the greek tongue, so I could have spoken to him and received nothing in return, had I wished - but I did not wish.

We formed a language between us of gestures and hand-signs, a language my brother could speak, and I rejoiced in his being able to communicate to me, and in being able to carry his messages and his love back to our mother - a mother he had never seen. But his spirit was too generous to hold that against her, when he knew it was none of her own doing, and all of my father's.

My father made war upon the Athenians for the crime of his son's death in their lands, and the Olympians took his side, despite his crimes, for they are ever fickle - perhaps my mother's punishment, and my voiceless brother's, were enough for their thirst for blood for those crimes.

My father's thirst, however, was still greater. He demanded tribute from the Athenians, to hold off the wrath of the gods - fourteen young people every nine years, to be 'sacrificed' to the 'appetite' of my brother, the supposed monster. Argus would no sooner have eaten a man than the sacrificial cow at the altar would do so. His bull's head brought with it a bull's stomachs and digestion, and he was ever able to eat only plants - flesh of any sort makes him vilely ill. By my father's orders, the guards pitched in bales of dry hay enough to keep him alive. I smuggled in thick braided ropes of thyme and oregano, olive boughs and sage, saffron and fennel, dill and catmint, sorrel and lavender, sweet flowers and herbs so my beloved brother would have some variety in his meals.

And so our days continued, brother and sister, growing taller and older, but otherwise very much the same.

 

* * *

 

 

The first time the sacrifices were sent to appease the king and the gods was horrible. My father had, of course, not seen fit to warn me of what was to come, and everyone but my mother and I viewed Argus as naught but a dumb beast.

A beast - and a monster. It seemed obvious to everyone that the 'monster' in the Labyrinth would kill anyone who ventured in. I went inside, true, but I was well known to be as much a witch as my aunt; the guards merely assumed that I bespelled my brother to keep him from harming me. I don't know how they reconciled their opinions of his savagery with the bales of hay thrown into the Labyrinth to feed him - but humans are remarkably good at believing exactly what they wish to. I needed to look no farther than my father to learn of that trait.

My father demanded tribute and sent it ‘to his monster', the fearful force that all knew he possessed. He used Argus's supposed face to intimidate his enemies, spinning tales of how fierce and cruel and murderous the beast was until all believed it except our mother and I.

No one but I had even ever seen Argus, for he knew he was to keep to the center of his prison - and so they painted him dark and twisted. A sister may be biased, but my brother's pale flesh and white fur blended into one another as smoothly as my own hair grew from my head, and his shape looked as natural as my own.

That day, when I tried to enter the Labyrinth, the guards stopped me. "Your spells might protect you from the monster, princess, but there's seven strong young men in there frightened for their lives and hating your royal father, and they might do you a mischief."

My heart quailed. Men expecting to have to defend their lives from a monster, and my brother in there all alone, with no idea that anything was different this day. I filled a censer with incense and sent the guards to sleep until I passed, and hurried through the Labyrinth, cloaked in shadows. I had laid enough threads of my power down in the halls that when I was within them I could feel them like a web, and feel the disturbances in them caused by other living beings. Since no one else was ever in the Labyrinth, I hadn't realized that I could tell the feeling of my brother apart from the feeling of humans, but now I knew that I could.

In the center, the hardest place to reach, I could feel my brother sleeping, and elsewhere in the Labyrinth were not seven youths, but fourteen - the guards apparently had not seen the seven maidens as a threat to me.

I blew on the censer, sending the smoke along the web of my power to where the fourteen sacrifices clustered in a knot, until I felt them slide into unconsciousness. I set my censer down, marking the place on the web with a small swirl of power that would also keep the smoke wafting to where I needed to be.

Safety accomplished, I hurried through the halls to where my brother lay. When I was almost there, I paused. What would I tell him? What would we do? The intended fate of the sacrifices was out of the question - Argus would never hurt anyone. But I couldn't just leave them in the Labyrinth until they starved - the risk of them hurting my brother was too great. I couldn't lead them out of the Labyrinth and free them. It was far too likely that it would get out that the monster hadn't killed them, and who knew what the king would do if he was slighted in such a way?

If my father couldn’t use Argus as a threat against his enemies, he would have no further use for him - and he might decide that he was too unpleasant a reminder of his failures to keep alive. I couldn’t lose my brother. I couldn’t. He was everything to me. But what else could be done about the sacrifices?

Perhaps Aunt Circe would have an idea. I sat down on the floor of the Labyrinth where I stood, dropping as quickly as I could into a trance and sending pure urgency to her.

A timeless interval later, her face appeared before me, worried. “Ariadne? What’s wrong?”

I explained hurriedly about the sacrifices. “I can’t possibly risk the king hurting Argus, but what else can I do?”

Circe nodded. “You’re right. Minos is too unpredictable, and he hates being made a fool of, which showing his monster to be toothless would do.” She sighed and stared off into the distance for a moment. “Can you get them out of the Labyrinth and to the shore tonight? I can’t keep them human, obviously, but I could take them. I could use more sheep.”

I bit my lip. “Do you have human bones I could leave near the entrance as ‘proof’ the were killed, or at least bones that could look human? And maybe gnawed on? I might be able to do it if I had the materials, but I don’t know where I could get so many bones without someone being suspicious.”

“I make it a policy never to get rid of perfectly good bones. You never know when you’ll need them. I’ll send some on the ship that will take your sacrifices.”

I smiled at her. My aunt seemed much better than any god, to me. True, she had not so much sheer power, but she was much more clever about using what she had, and I had yet to bring her a problem she had been unable to solve. “Thank you, aunt. You always know what to do.”

“This just means I’ll have to step up your lessons,” she said teasingly. “If I had schooled you in transfiguration properly by now, you’d have been able to make a lovely present for some shepherd all on your own. I suspect this isn’t the first time your father will do this, so I’ll just have to make sure you can take care of it yourself next time. A Titaness should be able to rely on herself.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

After two more rounds of sacrifices that, as my aunt had promised, saw the local shepherds enriched, the new pattern that had begun to form was changed. Among the sacrifices, there was a volunteer, one whose intention was to slay the ‘beast’ and stop the horror. Theseus was the son of Athens's king, and his aim was noble, even if I couldn’t agree with it, knowing the truth as I did. He had come to put an end to my father’s misplaced sacrifices, but it was not my father upon whom he had set his sights. He did not see the king who ordered the sacrifices responsible - only the 'beast' who supposedly carried them out.

He meant to kill Argus.

By looking at the threads of fate in a way my aunt had taught me, I could also see the shape of what the gods intended for this - because they were on his side. Of course they were. No Olympians had ever thought of my brother’s good. I was expected to help Theseus to kill my brother, to save the life of Theseus because I loved him, and then Athena would tell him to leave me behind, because I was on the Titans’ get. I could use those expectations for my own purposes, and save the one I really loved.

I asked my aunt's help in my dreams, and she told me what to do.

I put on every seduction and grace I knew, playing in every way the besotted maiden, and went to him to admit my love. "From when I first laid eyes on you," I said, "I loved you."

Theseus, who had grown up a prince in every way my brother hadn’t, could believe that. He had been raised on praise, and I suppose he was handsome after the human fashion.

"Would you break my heart by going to your death?" I asked.

"I don’t expect to die," he told me, and I hated him, because he believed it.  "I have trained all my life in the arts of war, as befits a prince, and I have the favor of the gods."

"I can help you win your way to the monster," I lied, hating myself for taking part in my brother's demonization, even to save his life. "Take this ball of twine and roll it before you on the ground. It will lead you to him, and safely back out of the Labyrinth when the deed is done. This sword will strike true from your hand."

"I will strike down the scourge, and never again will sacrifices die at his hands," Theseus vowed. I hated him all the more, for being so unbearably princely, for believing he knew what was best for everyone. He had killed far more than my poor brother, I was sure.

He didn't see through me, of course. Batted eyelashes and drugged perfume have convinced stronger men than he, and Aunt Circe taught me well.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

I slipped into the Labyrinth while the sacrifices were being ritually bathed and feasted, not wearing my usual garlands. I carried with me olive oil, bitter incense, a slaughtered lamb stuffed with sunflowers and asphodel, a silver knife, a pair of dark hooded cloaks, and my aunt's and mother's blessings - the ingredients I needed to carry out my plan. I walked through the halls without needing to think.  My feet had long since memorized the path.

Normally I spoke to Argus in the same fashion as he spoke to me - I preferred that we operate within the same circumstances, as much as we could, since so many other differences had been forced upon us. But he nonetheless understood spoken Greek, and this situation was complicated enough to call for it.

"You know it's time for the sacrifices. I have watched them, and there is a man within them sent to kill you. I've given him false magic items that will make him and everyone else think he has killed a monster, the kind they think lives in here, after I finish some preparations with this." I laid out the slaughtered lamb on the floor, and Argus looked disgusted. "I know, but they have to find a corpse." He huffed a sigh and nodded. "When that's done, no one will look for you again, so I can take you out of here." I clasped his hands, my eyes shining. "We can escape."

He was silent, stunned, for a moment - neither of us had ever really dared to dream that he would ever be able to leave these walls. His eyes lit and I drank in his beaming smile for a moment before he crushed me in a hug.

He let go and stood back to sign questions to me. Sun? Grass?

It hurt my heart to remember that my brother had never known anything but shadows and cold stone, but I smiled back. Yes. Grass floor. Lots sun. Fruit. No stone. No hay.

I had never seen my brother so happy. He glowed. You need from me?

Drop blood, nothing more. I held out my knife. He nodded trustingly and reached out to prick his finger on the tip. With my free hand, I signed Turn away. Once he was no longer looking, I thrust the knife into the breast of the lamb, murmuring the spell our aunt had taught me for this, bringing flesh together with a suggestion of my brother's shape and tying it in to what the prince expected to find. Blood and sunflowers would give it the illusion of life, and asphodel would give it a death.

The sword I had given Theseus had been used to slaughter this lamb, and was thoroughly tied to its death. The beast I was creating would be drawn to it, and play out its dark and violent part in my brother's freedom. The twine would keep Theseus away from the parts of the Labyrinth where my brother had truly lived, and far away from the secret path out we would be taking. And it would, indeed, lead him out again, as his 'murder' would do me no good if no one knew of it.

He would sneak off in the night without me, because Athena would tell him to leave me behind - not because she knew of my treachery, but because I was of the Titans' get. Little would he know that I would already be long gone, with one I cared for more for than him. And the king and everyone else but my mother would assume that I had left with Theseus.

 

We took the path I knew was safe, the one Daedalus had told me in secret was built into the walls, but had warned me that I shouldn't take until I had a way to be sure that no one would come after the 'escaped monster'. As I walked, swathed in a dark cloak and hand in hand with he whom I loved best in all the world, I thought about what would happen when Theseus entered the Labyrinth.

He would find a monster, as he and everyone else expected. It would look how he expected it to, with only the barest resemblance to my brother given to it by a drop of blood, and the rest of its twisted countenance given to it by the belief of Athens and Crete. I hadn't been able to bear looking at the thing, after I had created it - a dark and twisted mirror of Argus, created only to die.

It was worth it. Anything was worth it, to see the sun on my brother's skin, to walk with him through trees and meadows with open space around us.

We could never see our mother again, but she would know from seeing the 'corpse' of the 'monster' that it was not her son, and know that we had escaped. My brother and I would find somewhere we could stay, somewhere we would be safe - maybe out of Greece altogether. I had heard that the Egyptians had animal-headed gods, so perhaps they would look more kindly on my brother than the Olympians had.


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What comes after leaving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a syrupy sweet happily ever after that I wrote because I like happily ever afters. Feel free to not read it if you don't!

I strolled through the forest, smiling at the dappled sun through the leaves. Our life now was nothing like I had ever envisioned, but I found that I liked it.

I was on my way to the large meadow near our little house, with a large basket strapped to my back, ready to gather herbs and grasses for my magic and for Argus's meals.

I set the basket down in the tall grass and pulled out the large iron shears the witch had been willing to trade to me, for some of the strange knobbly mushrooms Argus had found that she called truffles. I looked around at the profusion of flowers and grasses with a happy sigh, and set to work harvesting enough grass and harmless flowers to fill the basket, as well as taking large handful of any new plant I found that I hadn't seen before and a nice bundle of the herbs the witch had taught me were the most useful that grew in this strange new land.

We could never have managed if it wasn't for her help. When we left the Labyrinth, Argus had found that empty space all around him made him nervous and uncomfortable. I knew Egypt was a desert land, even more open than Greece, so our plans would have to be revised. I found a wood for us to stay in that night that hid the horizon, and asked Aunt Circe what we should do in my dreams.

She is much older and wiser than I, and has contact with many other witches and children of gods in other lands, and she found one up north where the forests reach unbroken for farther than you could travel in a week that was willing to help my brother and I. That women had passed a thread of power to my aunt, who passed it to me, and so I had had a direction in which to travel.

And after long weeks of walking, taking circuitous paths to avoid areas that were too open for my brother's comfort, we had found our way to the forest where she lived, and had settled our little homestead in a hollow dead tree.

I brought my burden home and pulled the smaller bundle of herbs out of the basket before setting it down next to the table for Argus, who smiled up at me from his seat on our bench and offered me a little carved flower.

"Oh!" I took it and examined it from all angles. It was exquisitely detailed, down to the veins on the petals - Argus was getting better and better at whittling as he practiced, our little home was sprouting intricate details in every corner, and our rough furniture was growing steadily more comfortable and beautiful. Thank you, I signed to him, beaming, and set the flower on the table to look at while we ate.

I took my covered bowl of leftover rabbit from the night before out of our rudimentary root cellar and sat down across from Argus at the table, and we both ate one-handed, conversing with the other about how our morning had gone. We had had to invent many new signs, since we had settled here, for plants and animals and concepts we had never encountered before.

When I finished my meal, I dropped a kiss on Argus's forehead and took up the smaller bundle of new plants in a basket and set out for the witch's house.

I bought the witch every plant I could find, and she taught me what they were good for as magic or medicine, if they were poison, or if they were safe for Argus and I to eat. I left the bulk of what I collected for her to use, bringing home only one example of each plant, to carefully sketch in oak-gall ink in the heavy book of herbwifery that I was writing out for my own reference in an empty tome the witch had been willing to procure for me for more of the truffles. I also pressed the fragile leaves and blossoms between its pages.

On my way home, I passed several snares I had set and checked them, retrieving three more rabbits for my meals. I reset the snares and continued on my way, arriving home to an empty house. I smiled. Argus had been too nervous of the new place to leave the house much for weeks after we had first arrived, staying shut inside our hollow tree until his fear of all the space we had crossed to get there faded.

The forest was old, and huge, the trees far larger than Argus and I could have reached our arms around together. They blocked the horizon entirely, and most of the sky, making it a far more comfortable place for him to roam outside than the hillsides of Greece.

Years of learning the Labyrinth had made both of us good at directions, and neither of us had ever gotten lost in the forest. Argus wandered, finding berries and mushrooms in the safely shaded parts, while I gathered what things we needed from the sunny clearing.

I also dealt with all of the ramifications of the little amount of 'hunting' I did for my meals, so that the greater part of the mushrooms and berries could go to my brother, since he needed to eat so much more than I. I had the rabbit snares, and a woven fish trap in the creek that I checked sometimes for variety - though I focused on the rabbits, because their skins were useful. The witch had told me that winters here were much colder than we were used to, and I wanted to save up enough furs to make my brother and I warm things to wear, without having to rely on the witch's willingness to trade us things for truffles.

I got home and skinned and gutted the rabbits, burying the guts under a berry bush nearby that I was trying to cultivate to be as prolific as possible. I brought the dressed rabbits inside and put them over the coals of the fire to begin to braise and went back out to finish with the skins. I scraped them thoroughly over a log and set the furs to soaking in a basin with the rabbits' brains to tan, then went back inside to tend the fire.

It should have been dangerous to leave the skins outside, but the witch had taught me a spell to keep predators from coming within a league of our home. So I could safely keep all the evidence of my hunting outside, where it wouldn't sicken my brother, and I could be reassured that nothing would attack either of us as we went about our days, here in this land of bears and wolves.

When my rabbit, seasoned with a packet of an herb the witch had sent home with me, was almost done, Argus came in the door behind me and set down his basket. I spun, beaming, and abandoned my pot to hug him. He lifted me up and spun me around while I laughed, then set me down to free his hands. Smell different. New plant?

I nodded. Witch gave. What you find?

He turned and lifted bundles out of the basket to show me. He untied the smallest on the table to reveal a large mound of what we had learned were called blueberries. I squealed in delight. Found many bush, he signed. Many many berry. Tomorrow you help me get many?

Yes. I made a show of trying to peer around him into the rest of the basket, while he made a show of trying to hide it behind him, before snorting a laugh and opening the second bundle on the table to reveal several large lumpy truffles.

Witch. Trade.

I nodded. Good have. Maybe need trade for clothes. Glad.

He opened another, smaller package to reveal a pile of the type of mushroom I had discovered was my favorite, and I clapped my hands with glee. Thank! I cook now?

Yes. For you. He caught one of my hands and squeezed it. I smiled up at him, then whirled away to poke up the fire a little higher and break up the mushrooms into my braised rabbit.

Shortly, when my rabbit was done, I sat down with a dish of it across the table from Argus, and again we ate one-handed while we talked until the sun went down, then tucked our leftovers away and went to sleep on our carefully cultivated beds of moss.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I HAD NO IDEA THAT CIRCE WAS ARIADNE'S AUNT BEFORE I STARTED RESEARCHING FOR THIS FIC, OMG. It worked in *perfectly*.


End file.
